


like a dream, marigolds

by sadbutchhours



Category: Ratched (TV)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, First Time, Lots of kissing, a little bit of sex but secondary to the Feelings, gwen is horny for ENTHUSIASTIC CONSENT, i tried to avoid the angst but u really can't with these sad motherfuckers, like. absurd amounts of making out, mildred hates herself as usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:02:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27911209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadbutchhours/pseuds/sadbutchhours
Summary: Mildred finds herself completely and utterly consumed by Gwendolyn, in more ways than one.
Relationships: Gwendolyn Briggs/Mildred Ratched
Comments: 7
Kudos: 114





	like a dream, marigolds

**Author's Note:**

> i got the phrase "sun-kissed" stuck in my head last night and popped this out instead of doing my math homework. so. that's that!

“I love you, Mildred.” 

The words seem to shake the very walls of the room around them, the way they reverberate against Mildred’s body. Or maybe that’s just the way Gwendolyn is quivering under her hands, in her arms. Or maybe that’s just the way these things feel, when you hear them out loud like that.

“I love you,” Gwendolyn says again, and Mildred can feel Gwendolyn’s breath ghosting over her lips.

“I love you.” It’s instinctual, the way she echoes it. It simply bounces from Gwendolyn’s lips to Mildred’s and back again. She loves Gwendolyn. Of course she does.

And then the words are just hanging there, in the inch of room between them, and Gwendolyn tilts her head up and they’re _touching._ They’re kissing, Mildred supposes, but Mildred’s kissed people before -- men -- and it’s never been anything like this. She thinks they must be melting together, faces and bodies becoming one. She thinks she’s about to fall into the floor.

But Gwendolyn pulls back to take a breath and Mildred can just barely register that she’s still whole, still firm around the edges of her being, before her lips are at Gwendolyn’s again. And _God,_ she wants to scream into Gwendolyn’s mouth, wants to claw Gwendolyn’s chest open and crawl inside of it. She wants to die here. She wants Gwendolyn’s roof to cave in over them and then she wants their skeletons to be discovered here, ribs tangled up in each other, one body indecipherable from the other. 

It’s overwhelming, wanting all of these things at once, and she thinks she’s halfway to hallucination by the time Gwendolyn releases her, knocks their foreheads together, breathes little puffs of air down onto Mildred’s face. She can smell the cigarettes Gwendolyn smokes, can still taste Gwendolyn’s lipstick when she runs her tongue over her own lips. It’s intoxicating.

Gwendolyn smiles at her. She can practically feel it against her face.

It’s a long time before either of them speaks. Gwendolyn draws a shaky breath in after what must be a year of just studying each other’s eyes. 

“Do you have to be somewhere?”

It’s such a gentle question, seems so pointless after the weight of what they’ve just done, and Mildred laughs. She pushes herself off of Gwendolyn, wipes a tear from her eye. She must look a wreck.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “I’m staying here.”

At that Gwendolyn lets out a broken sob. For a moment Mildred thinks she’s ruined everything, destroyed this perfect beautiful fragile thing like everything else she touches, but then Gwendolyn wraps her arms around her and pulls her close.

“Do you mean… stay the night?”

Mildred turns her head to rest her ear against Gwendolyn’s shoulder, shutting the world halfway out. She thinks she can hear the ocean through Gwendolyn’s bones.

“What about Trevor?”

“Gone,” Gwendolyn says simply. “He’s gone.”

That word -- _gone_ \-- has only ever meant pain and terror and utter, heart-wrenching loneliness for Mildred, but the way Gwendolyn says it it sounds simultaneously permanent -- they are alone, together, forever -- and so wonderfully temporary that Mildred knows he’s safe. 

A different kind of panic rises in her when she thinks about the implications of her and Gwendolyn sharing a bed. The expectations Gwendolyn might have, the ways she might react if Mildred isn’t ready.

“You can sleep on the couch if you’d like,” says Gwendolyn, as if she’s read Mildred’s mind. “It pulls out.”

Mildred sighs against her. “Did I tell you I love you?”

Gwendolyn chuckles. “I don’t know,” she says. “Might as well say it again.”

She pulls back, looks Gwendolyn in the eyes. “I love you.”

“And I love you.”

They kiss a few more times that day (okay, more than a few), as Gwendolyn’s making dinner, as they’re reading books in the living room after, and finally, heatedly, on the pull-out couch after Gwendolyn’s converted it into a bed. She’s straddling Gwendolyn’s lap, one hand on each of Gwendolyn’s shoulders, and as wonderful and delicious as it is Mildred can tell Gwendolyn’s holding something back. She pulls away to take a breath and Gwendolyn doesn’t chase her. She just looks down at where her hands are cupping Mildred’s waist.

“We don’t have to do anything,” says Gwendolyn. “We don’t even have to do _this_ if you don’t want to.” She gestures vaguely at Mildred on her lap.

“But you want to.”

Gwendolyn sighs. “Yes. But I don’t want to do anything if you’re not ready.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?” Gwendolyn looks up to meet Mildred’s gaze, and her eyes are so kind and open and loving that Mildred feels herself start to cry just looking at her.

“Wait for me.”

“Oh, darling,” says Gwendolyn, bringing her hands up to gently grip Mildred’s forearms. “I really do mean it. It’s not -- it’s not _fun_ unless both people are enjoying it.”

Mildred’s not sure she believes Gwendolyn, but there have been enough lies between them, enough breaches of trust, that she feels she has to. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just need some time.”

“All good things do.” For a moment she’s confused about the words there -- it should have been all good things _take_ time, not _need_ time -- and then she realizes the good thing is not whatever she and Gwendolyn will eventually do but Mildred herself.

That makes the tears finally begin to fall, and Gwendolyn frets for a moment before Mildred smiles and leans in and whispers “they’re _good_ tears” against her lips.

For a few weeks they just kiss. With breaks in between, of course, to sleep and eat and work, and to go to doctor’s appointments which are scarier for Mildred than for Gwendolyn, but they might as well be kissing the entire time because that’s all Mildred remembers of this time looking back. How they just keep coming back to each other, wrapping their arms around each others’ waists, noses bumping at every opportunity. This must be how newlyweds feel, she thinks, so obsessed with another person that they can scarcely go an hour without missing them. She thinks she understands the phrase _sun-kissed_ more than she ever has before, for Gwendolyn is the sun and out of all the people on Earth she’s chosen to give herself to Midred.

Sometimes, when Mildred is feeling particularly bold, she’ll take Gwendolyn’s hand and put it just under or over her own breast, or move her own hands higher up Gwendolyn’s thighs until her thumbs feel a tendon beneath them. She delights in the sounds Gwendolyn makes when she does this, in the way she presses harder against Mildred’s mouth. Gwendolyn slips her tongue into Mildred’s mouth sometimes, or breaks away to kiss Mildred’s neck, and that’s almost better than the proper kisses.

She doesn’t sleep on the couch anymore, either, but in the bed with Gwendolyn, which is large enough that they can lie separately if Mildred’s had a bad day. Usually, however, they end up touching each other in some way, Mildred’s head on Gwendolyn’s chest or Gwendolyn’s arm draped loosely over Mildred’s stomach. It’s a kind of physical intimacy that makes Mildred smile even in her sleep.

One morning they’re kissing just as soon as Gwendolyn opens her eyes and finds herself face to face with Mildred, and even with their morning breath and mussed-up hair Mildred doesn’t think there could be any better way to start a morning. Minutes pass, and Mildred tries to count them, but it’s hard to focus when Gwendolyn is so _close._

Finally she whispers, “Touch me, Gwen.”

“I am.” Gwendolyn’s teeth press gently into Mildred’s bottom lip as she smiles.

“Touch me _more,_ ” Mildred whines, and she’s not sure what’s come over her, but she knows she wants this. Gwendolyn pulls back, searching Mildred’s face for any sign of hesitation.

“Are you sure?”

The way she’s being so careful about this, so loving, only makes Mildred burn hotter.

“ _Yes._ "

And then Gwendolyn is touching her _everywhere_ , and oh it’s like the fantasies she’d had while being penetrated by that horrid man but it’s somehow a million times better. She tries to focus on what Gwendolyn is doing, to memorize the steps so she can sing them back to her, but before she knows it Gwendolyn’s tongue has somehow ended up between her legs and Mildred finds she can't focus on much of anything at all. There’s a sound reverberating around the room and Mildred realizes it’s come from her own traitorous throat. She finds she’s not at all embarrassed. There’s no room for embarrassment when Gwendolyn is doing _that_ at the deepest part of her.

Everything is so _good,_ and Mildred thinks she’s about to split open with the sheer white-hotness of it all. Gwendolyn takes Mildred’s hand and places it on her own head. Mildred threads her fingers through red-blonde hair and it pulls Gwendolyn just a little bit closer to her and then everything is just -- gone. 

By the time she finally opens her eyes again (she hadn’t even realized she’d closed them) Gwendolyn is already back up at her side and pressing her mouth against Mildred’s forehead, over and over and over. She takes a breath in and looks at Gwendolyn, eyes all stormy and intense, and kisses her. There’s a strange taste on her lips that Mildred realizes must be _Mildred_. The thought alone is enough to make her blood sing.

“What _was_ that?” Mildred breathes. She knows on a medical level, of course, what an orgasm is, but she’s never felt anything quite like that. 

Gwendolyn chuckles. “The French call it 'the little death.'”

“They’re right,” she mumbles against Gwendolyn. “Do you want…”

“Not now,” says Gwendolyn. Mildred, rather selfishly, is hurt by that -- had she done something wrong? “Only because I’ll never want to leave the bed if that happens.”

Mildred smiles. “There would be worse things.” 

Mildred, for her part, doesn’t ever want to leave this bed, this room, this _world._ She knows, of course, that all of this is temporary, that eventually Gwendolyn, too, will be ripped away from her by the cancer or another bullet or something else entirely. Nothing lasts forever, especially not for Mildred Ratched.

It’s why she reaches for Gwendolyn just a little harder, stretches a little further, when Gwendolyn rolls over and gets out of bed.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to emily king for being incredibly hot and writing such cool songs.
> 
> say hey on twitter @sadbutchhours !


End file.
